Gratitude | The Key to Abundance
Friends, this writing feels over due yet one surrenders to now as it is the only time there is.
It has been weeks since returning from Standing Rock, the process of integrating all experienced has itself been a journey. Words like arduous and challenging come to mind though I need to explain them to the reader for they are part of the key to the immense flow of abundance experienced on all dimensions; physical, emotional and spiritual during these past many months.
Challenging times we are navigating for sure, though when we rise to meet the call and challenge, when we find the courage and heart necessary to walk straight into the fire we find that Her amazing grace and abundance welcomes us like a prodigal child coming home.
My first words of gratitude are for those who donated clothing, supplies and money during my time at Standing Rock. Given that now is a time of reckoning (recognizing) an accounting (recount) of these gifts feels appropriate, not a spreadsheet and coin by coin accounting for this is the dying way of a control system that will fight to the end, as long as we fund it and consent to its greed. This is my recounting of an experience that is not only changing each individual but the whole of humanity.
There was a constant flow of impacting experiences during my month walk through Oceti Sakowin, Rosebud and Sacred Stone, one of the most vital ones was seeing the amount of donations arriving from around the world. Large canvas tents overflowing with clothing, shoes, tents, sleeping bags, food, blankets and almost everything you could think to need.
So much was given that I met several people making round trips from Michigan and elsewhere, taking what couldn’t be used and bringing back what was necessary. The camps started giving the overflow to the local communities and reservations.
Food was also sent in waves from everywhere, organic farmers sending truck loads of harvest. Canned goods, medicine, way too much to list …
I would be remiss to not acknowledge the cooks in the multiple tents preparing meals for thousands in often harsh conditions. The work they gifted was one of the most vital and trying. Brandon and Tawasi at Sacred Stone you both have moved my soul, thank you.
Individually owned companies sent their whole years production, yurts, teepees, domes, even a fully loaded RV. I witnessed a 40 foot shipping container of wood burning stoves and propane heaters that was being unpacked and sorted by a volunteer.
Close your eyes for a moment and visualize this, feel it, know it.
Human Beings discovering they had so much to give.
To those of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico who loaded my jeep with items they were gratefully added to supply tents. Volunteers did their best to keep items sorted, an endless task and they did so with smiles and a human born desire to be of service. To those who gave me the currency of cash your gifts were given directly to individuals on the ground, to those I walked with. The greatest needs were fuel for vehicles, cell phone credit, propane tanks, transportation to Bismarck to buy needed items. Once the channel of gifting opened all gave more, its like that. Thank you all.
The donations that were mailed to the camps came in abundant waves; so much so that it was impossible to keep up with the flow, unpacking, sorting and delivery was all done by volunteers, there was a log jam in getting them to the people on the ground.
I thank the three men from San Francisco who donated their winter tent before they left. I offered to buy it, still having monetary funds and their immediate response surprised me; it takes some getting used to this way of life.
What this experiential walk did existentiality for me is take me into a place of true humility, humbled to be the recipient of so much good. Humbled by a rise in spirit that opened these long closed doors of giving and receiving in such grace. Humbled to feel my smallness against the vast backdrop of endless sky, to hear the beat of drums mixed with Lakota song. In this most humble place my spirit expanded into a continuum of space.
I laid down on Mother Earth and thanked her in ceaseless flows of gratitude. The falsely installed wall of scarcity had finally been breached.
Too many names to name, you all know what you gave and to you I send a personal prayer of gratitude, we are the sound, the trumpet call as the walls come tumbling down.
There is a very special person who I must give thanks to, my earthly mother, Nancy Ann Wessell Anderson, who embodies the very nature of mother Herself. Her unwavering support, her essential nature of giving has been received in the loving heart of her daughter. This is our true legacy.
Being back here has been a contraction, walking into glutted grocery stores pandering poison as food, wandering through malls of imposed glamour bumps up against the expansion of spirit. So many are contracted in the soul eating mechanisms of consumerism, consuming without consciousness or awareness of what feeds them. Sad and humbling again in a different way.
The task ahead seems a near impossible mountain to climb, the Work ceaseless and yet she gives herself too it in wild abandon for there is only one path experienced in the multiples of us.
Water is Life – Mni Wiconi
Protect the sacred, the magical child within you and all children everywhere, this is the sacred call that has echoed through the memories of immortal time.
